The Quake 3 demo was one of my favorite games I wasn't allowed to play as a teenager. Loved blowing people up with a rocket launcher and laser beaming with a railgun. I have no qualms about whether AI finished this, just enjoying the fact that nostalgia can be invoked more easily and cheaply than ever before.
On a similar note World of Warcraft just launched "WoW Forever", a nostalgic throwback to vanilla WoW. Millions of people tried to play on the first day and for the first time ever during a major launch of WoW, everything went smoothly and players were able to log in and play without lagging out. Normally it took a few days after launch for servers to catch up to demand and allow people to actually play the game without lag or disconnections. I'm confident that AI played a major role in allowing Blizzard's team to navigate a WoW launch successfully for the first time.
It seems weird to attribute WoW's launch success to AI and not to the 20+ years of experience the industry has with modern online game architecture. When it launched in 2004 the state of MMO games was very different and a lot of those choices are hard to undo on an actively played game. I imagine AI was used but I doubt it had any great architectural insight that the experts at Blizzard didn't.
My belief that AI may have helped Blizzard plan, set up and smoothly launch WoW Forever is inferred and based on the poor quality of their other recent launches. WoW Classic released in 2019 and was a laggy mess for the first few days. Blizzard recently said WoW Forever is their biggest launch in history for peak concurrent players, bigger than Classic or any expansion they've released including Burning Crusade and WotLK.
Blizzard has long been derided for its poor performance when handling massive player events, showing worse performance in that regard than large private servers such as Nostalrius.
The biggest technological advancement in the past couple years that could help explain their sudden and dramatic improvement is AI, in my opinion. I think it's fantastic if AI is indeed a large part of the reason for their rapid improvement.
Wow Classic was fine except for the queue. Any limitations were arbitrary to fit into the no changes mentality that the community had (e.g. queues etc due to limited layers and servers.)
Not nostalgia for me, I play Quake 3 about 15 times a week with a group of people, it's still awesome fun. We're all so good at it, it's genuinely a difficult competition every time. After 15 years we still get in ridiculous/interesting situations in the same maps all the time.
Same here. My BFF and I have played Q3 on and off since it was released. But we've clocked more hours in the past couple years than in the previous ten.
Even after all this time we have a blast and sometimes situations erupt into huge bouts of laughter. I'll never not think that an errant rocket splash knocking him off the map is hilarious.
> I have no qualms about whether AI finished this, just enjoying the fact that nostalgia can be invoked more easily and cheaply than ever before.
Maybe making nostalgic experiences available so cheaply is not a good thing. For me seeing mods and reimaginings of old games is interesting because people puts lots of effort into them with attention to detail and their own ideas. Someone recreating Half-Life 1 with modern graphics using AI is not going to create something as cool as Black Mesa, for instance, which didn't attempt to make a 1 to 1 recreation but to improve things and make it fit with more modern graphics.
There are some gameplay issues with the WoW Layering tech (Layering is World of Warcraft's name for where you there are multiple shards for the same zone, and players may transfer between each layer as it balances. So instead of different servers, everyone is on one "server", and each zone is sharded to accomadate large populations). But the layering and single realm tech is just really well done. It scales to huge populations seamlessly. There is some polishing on zone boundaries and pvp, but the tech was pulled off without a hitch for a massive launch, millions of concurrent players.
This is the type of change I am referring to when inferring that AI may have helped develop the changes that enabled such a massive improvement over previous launch events.
I am not a Blizzard employee and don't have insider information. I'm just impressed with their improvements and hopeful it was at least partially enabled by their use of AI to help ideate, design and implement.
I don't think there is any evidence AI has helped them do this. They almost assuredly used AI, sure. But this seems like its the result of investing in their platform team and infrastructure over many years.
I remember pirating Quake, got it in August before the Nov launch (gotta love early 0-day releases) and playing the hell out of it. Played so many mods and the early machinima mods. By the time Quake 2 came out I had money to buy the game and did so, great game. I setup my first Ethernet network between two machines and the first thing I did was call a few friends over for 1v1 Quake 2 matches. I can still remember my friend Jose killing me in that lava room trap and the laughs had. I wasnt a big twitch gamer but my brother and I did a little bit of Q3A DM but it wasn't my thing; I prefer a story and casual game play.
I remember buying Quake 4 but I don't remember playing it. Tells you a lot right there.
I remember really enjoying the single-player campaign for Quake 4 at the time, but I don't know how well it holds up. I still have the discs in the original retail packaging, tucked away in a closet somewhere.
> I actually love Q4 as it packs so much into the game. I guess it’s a love or hate game.
I guess it is, and if we're being honest I'm a certified hater.
I played all of the Quake games online, a lot, at their corresponding time of initial release. First on software, then accelerated on 3dfx Voodoo cards, then later on NVIDIA RIVA TNT and the original GeForce cards (to tie this into some of today's other big news).
I played untold hours of multiplayer online netQuake, Quake II and Quake III Arena and have my own semi-controversial opinion that Quake II was actually the best of them all (most people tend to either prefer the original, or III). But you may be the first person I've ever encountered online or IRL who has professed love for Quake 4. (I'm sure there are others out there, I just haven't run into them).
I barely played any of them in single player, to be fair, so that could very well be a factor in the difference of opinion(?).
For single-player, Quake 4 felt more related to Doom 3 and the later Doom remakes. A more modern, atmospheric, FPS dungeon crawler.
For me, Quake 3 was the end of my appreciation for Id games, since I am only interested in single-player and it didn't even try to offer that. I am drawn to the immersive FPS environment, but I have no competitive urge nor enjoyment from having random participants disrupting the experience.
Yeah I get that. I also came from the Quake I era but I rarely played multiplayer games. I get why many Quake players dislike Q4 because it has little to do with the original Quake games gameplay-wise. Quake 2 is of the same universe but the style is different.
I tend to treat Q4 as a good FPS and that’s it. It is a polished game with a lot of contents so I love it. Quake I is still my fav FPS but Quake 4 is a good game as well.
I also love DOOM 3 for a similar reason —- completely different from the other DOOMs including DOOM 4 but still a fun game. I guess I prefer slower pace when I grow into my 40s…
That said, I still haven’t played my dream game —- a first person RPG —- something similar to Hexen/Skyrim but with richer contexts. Something like a first person D&D game.
Online games are too fast to let the atmosphere sink in. Playing the new Quake anniversary levels and they are a real treat. I hope to do the brutalist game jam levels next.
At least in Germany, at the time when Quake 4 was released, basically everybody who was slightly interested in gaming topics (independent from whether one loved or hated this game) knew about it because of the huge outrage that the German version of Quake 4 was so censored:
Halfway through the game there's literally a pivotal plot point that entirely hinges on a particularly gruesome event immersively experienced in first person.
Not to mention the various details in the environment that are incredibly repulsive but are a key part of the unspoken lore, ambiance, and general plot.
The game artistically and thematically entirely falls flat without the reviling experience of the Strogg that is witnessed at every corner.
> Halfway through the game there's literally a pivotal plot point that entirely hinges on a particularly gruesome event immersively experienced in first person.
I have never played Quake 4, but if you are talking about the "stroggification" cutscene: according to (*), this scene was simply removed. In (**), this particular topic is handled at 7:49.
Players at the time indeed complained that because of this change, quite a lot of things in the story did make much less sense.
My memory of quake 4 was me and my friends were excited because it was one of the first PC games to have a DVD release instead of a bunch of CDs. This felt revolutionary at the time.
I think a cool middle-ground for the future could be that AI-based modding becomes a first-class service provided by game companies. That way, they could reasonably own the IP of mods (especially if they provided the AI services), and it'd sort of end-run around like, "oh but you just copy the game or make the game" but instead, the fundamentals are there, the platform is there, etc. Make it easy for customers to play their mods with friends, etc.
I don’t understand why this isn’t more common including long before AI. As in, why don’t game companies make source code available to modders and take a cut of sales? Even if mods sell for a fraction the price of the main game, some are bound to take off, so for the game studio it’s like being given 1000 lottery tickets where a handful are bound to win, and at no cost.
Most modding communities see it as a creative hobby, something that they do for the love of the games and communities. Paid mods are generally not something they're very receptive to. These communities are mostly people who are into retro or indie games and reject modern gaming's various monetization methods.
Leaked source code,flame wars, toxic fanbase making shitstorm why work with this modder but not that one, same idea as secret internal plans .. and unclear legal situation in general with hiring people om the other side of the world is what come to my mind why this is not happening more often. But it does happen sometimes, usually the modders get a individual offer from the company.
That's like saying my house was framed by a hammer instead of a carpenter. AI is a just a tool with no agency. The people wielding the tool finished this expansion, just as the title says.
Less like a carpenter using a hammer and more like a Sorcerer's Apprentice using brooms. Your give them instructions, and they mostly take it from there. Hopefully your understanding of those instructions aligns with theirs, and hopefully when it starts to diverge you'll know how to course correct.
AI is fundamentally different to other tools because it directs itself for the most part (i.e. has agency) - the user typically only provides direction, that too usually vague direction. It's like calling a vending machine a tool for producing soda.
To be honest, you make a good point. The problem is generally that AI erases many of the tells of a quality work, because even bad works tend to carry the exact same level of language. When I see that the entire description was AI-generated, I wonder how many of these points were actually inspected by a real person or just hallucinated by the model. Surely there is some quality to it, but I feel like I would need more qualifiers than "finished" to know if it's worth trying, you know?
It's not exactly analogous to a hammer, even though I agree that it is a tool. If a carpenter got the framing all wrong, the hammer wouldn't fix it. If a prompter got the instructions all wrong, or didn't supervise enough, or didn't verify enough, the AI still makes something that appears to pass initial muster.
That's a good point about the carpenter getting the framing wrong. If that happened, it would be caught during the required inspection (by someone else), and the construction would be halted until it was fixed.
The issue with using AI as a tool to build software is that the inspection step is not required. I'm not sure an AI-generated description is a sign of bad inspection processes. I think maybe in the case of a game mod, the description is not as important as it would be for some software that someone is selling.
I guess my point is that quality can't be assessed merely by whether something was built with AI. A trustworthy team will have carried out inspections along the way. The question is how can we know that?
Oh, I wasn't saying AI made the quality bad! I was just saying the title inspires some confidence that AI could bring into question. ("Modders" are typically quite dedicated and passionate, so if it were a fully organic effort, you'd know it'd be good!) Of course, you can always just audit the code yourself to establish whatever you might need, I never meant to imply otherwise! I just think it's better to know about the use of AI when it happens.
The project is quite transparent about it, saying it was "proudly vibecoded". The entire "not sure what was hallucinated" narrative seems stuck in 2025.
Some friends of mine play old games that are on community life support with official servers having been shutdown years ago. I sometimes support them when they have some tech issues and whenever I stumble upon documentation of these projects being spread over forums and vintage 2010 era gaming portal websites I'm glad that we have AI now.
> The project is quite transparent about it, saying it was "proudly vibecoded".
Oh, I didn't spot that in the submission, is it behind links? I read a few paragraphs of the description and left because it didn't seem organic. My bad.
> whenever I stumble upon documentation of these projects being spread over forums and vintage 2010 era gaming portal websites I'm glad that we have AI now.
I love AI! The submission title just gave me hopes and the non-organic feel was a bit of a bummer. But nothing against the project itself.
> even bad works tend to carry the exact same level of language
Maybe this is one of the better times to encourage "literate programming" all over again?
If the majority of the source is detailed prose comments instead of "code", you would be able to tell. I think you're correct that this is an information problem (like the law of small numbers).
I strongly believe that if a new project is interesting enough for someone to be reading the source of a literate codebase, the prose that goes with it will be distinct enough that the first publisher would necessarily have to be human.
I have the neurodivergence or mental illness that makes me overexplain everything :D
(Technically not "makes", but I always feel like it's better for both sides to understand each other more completely in order to have a more fruitful debate)
On a similar note World of Warcraft just launched "WoW Forever", a nostalgic throwback to vanilla WoW. Millions of people tried to play on the first day and for the first time ever during a major launch of WoW, everything went smoothly and players were able to log in and play without lagging out. Normally it took a few days after launch for servers to catch up to demand and allow people to actually play the game without lag or disconnections. I'm confident that AI played a major role in allowing Blizzard's team to navigate a WoW launch successfully for the first time.
Blizzard has long been derided for its poor performance when handling massive player events, showing worse performance in that regard than large private servers such as Nostalrius.
The biggest technological advancement in the past couple years that could help explain their sudden and dramatic improvement is AI, in my opinion. I think it's fantastic if AI is indeed a large part of the reason for their rapid improvement.
Lets agree to disagree, happy to attribute llm wins where respect is earned but not more, to balance out various horror stories
Even after all this time we have a blast and sometimes situations erupt into huge bouts of laughter. I'll never not think that an errant rocket splash knocking him off the map is hilarious.
Maybe making nostalgic experiences available so cheaply is not a good thing. For me seeing mods and reimaginings of old games is interesting because people puts lots of effort into them with attention to detail and their own ideas. Someone recreating Half-Life 1 with modern graphics using AI is not going to create something as cool as Black Mesa, for instance, which didn't attempt to make a 1 to 1 recreation but to improve things and make it fit with more modern graphics.
I am not a Blizzard employee and don't have insider information. I'm just impressed with their improvements and hopeful it was at least partially enabled by their use of AI to help ideate, design and implement.
yea that opening Quake 4 sequence came a little too early for me D:
I've replayed Quake 1 and Quake 2 dozens of times but I'll never play Quake 4 again.
I remember buying Quake 4 but I don't remember playing it. Tells you a lot right there.
But I’ll need to play the expansion first.
I guess it is, and if we're being honest I'm a certified hater.
I played all of the Quake games online, a lot, at their corresponding time of initial release. First on software, then accelerated on 3dfx Voodoo cards, then later on NVIDIA RIVA TNT and the original GeForce cards (to tie this into some of today's other big news).
I played untold hours of multiplayer online netQuake, Quake II and Quake III Arena and have my own semi-controversial opinion that Quake II was actually the best of them all (most people tend to either prefer the original, or III). But you may be the first person I've ever encountered online or IRL who has professed love for Quake 4. (I'm sure there are others out there, I just haven't run into them).
I barely played any of them in single player, to be fair, so that could very well be a factor in the difference of opinion(?).
For single-player, Quake 4 felt more related to Doom 3 and the later Doom remakes. A more modern, atmospheric, FPS dungeon crawler.
For me, Quake 3 was the end of my appreciation for Id games, since I am only interested in single-player and it didn't even try to offer that. I am drawn to the immersive FPS environment, but I have no competitive urge nor enjoyment from having random participants disrupting the experience.
I tend to treat Q4 as a good FPS and that’s it. It is a polished game with a lot of contents so I love it. Quake I is still my fav FPS but Quake 4 is a good game as well.
I also love DOOM 3 for a similar reason —- completely different from the other DOOMs including DOOM 4 but still a fun game. I guess I prefer slower pace when I grow into my 40s…
That said, I still haven’t played my dream game —- a first person RPG —- something similar to Hexen/Skyrim but with richer contexts. Something like a first person D&D game.
Basically id had Raven do a more single player focussed Quake game.
Ever played Xonotic?
!remindme 74 years.
https://grok.com/share/c2hhcmQtMw_f6980a4a-d6af-4ec9-ad4f-b1...
> https://censorship.fandom.com/wiki/Quake_4
> https://www.reddit.com/r/quake/comments/1namarb/quake_4_on_s...
Halfway through the game there's literally a pivotal plot point that entirely hinges on a particularly gruesome event immersively experienced in first person.
Not to mention the various details in the environment that are incredibly repulsive but are a key part of the unspoken lore, ambiance, and general plot.
The game artistically and thematically entirely falls flat without the reviling experience of the Strogg that is witnessed at every corner.
Under
> https://web.archive.org/web/20121227232433/https://www.schni... (*)
you can find screenshots of the changes. A video about this topic can be found at
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ru5RHmxFIYw (**)
--
I have never played Quake 4, but if you are talking about the "stroggification" cutscene: according to (*), this scene was simply removed. In (**), this particular topic is handled at 7:49.
Players at the time indeed complained that because of this change, quite a lot of things in the story did make much less sense.
So there wasn't the same level of hype.
- Splitting your community is a concern. The classic example is multiplayer DLC: if not everyone can access it then it will risk low adoption.
- Presales and first week sales are hugely important to financing projects. Not many games achieve a long tail.
- Developers are expensive. Paying a team of artists and designers and programmers demands that they generate enough revenue to make it worthwhile.
AI opens this door because:
- Its capacity to be constrained fits neatly into mod frameworks.
- It's incredibly cheap to operate, compared to the human team.
- Users are comfortable with its SaaS model and so won't be deterred by a subscription model.
There are exceptions of course.
Leaked source code,flame wars, toxic fanbase making shitstorm why work with this modder but not that one, same idea as secret internal plans .. and unclear legal situation in general with hiring people om the other side of the world is what come to my mind why this is not happening more often. But it does happen sometimes, usually the modders get a individual offer from the company.
Sich doch einmal wegbegeben!
Und nun sollen seine Geister
Auch nach meinem Willen leben.
Seine Wort’ und Werke
Merkt’ ich und den Brauch,
Und mit Geistesstärke
Tu’ ich Wunder auch.
------------------
I like Goethe's German. In general, German does not feel very song-songy to me, but Goethe wrote some really good and catchy poetry.
It's not exactly analogous to a hammer, even though I agree that it is a tool. If a carpenter got the framing all wrong, the hammer wouldn't fix it. If a prompter got the instructions all wrong, or didn't supervise enough, or didn't verify enough, the AI still makes something that appears to pass initial muster.
The issue with using AI as a tool to build software is that the inspection step is not required. I'm not sure an AI-generated description is a sign of bad inspection processes. I think maybe in the case of a game mod, the description is not as important as it would be for some software that someone is selling.
I guess my point is that quality can't be assessed merely by whether something was built with AI. A trustworthy team will have carried out inspections along the way. The question is how can we know that?
Wrong. Lack of inspection is a process issue symptom, not an AI issue symptom.
The project is quite transparent about it, saying it was "proudly vibecoded". The entire "not sure what was hallucinated" narrative seems stuck in 2025.
Some friends of mine play old games that are on community life support with official servers having been shutdown years ago. I sometimes support them when they have some tech issues and whenever I stumble upon documentation of these projects being spread over forums and vintage 2010 era gaming portal websites I'm glad that we have AI now.
Nothing has changed in that respect since 2025, despite the many claims to the contrary. LLMs still hallucinate quite regularly.
Oh, I didn't spot that in the submission, is it behind links? I read a few paragraphs of the description and left because it didn't seem organic. My bad.
> whenever I stumble upon documentation of these projects being spread over forums and vintage 2010 era gaming portal websites I'm glad that we have AI now.
I love AI! The submission title just gave me hopes and the non-organic feel was a bit of a bummer. But nothing against the project itself.
Maybe this is one of the better times to encourage "literate programming" all over again?
If the majority of the source is detailed prose comments instead of "code", you would be able to tell. I think you're correct that this is an information problem (like the law of small numbers).
I strongly believe that if a new project is interesting enough for someone to be reading the source of a literate codebase, the prose that goes with it will be distinct enough that the first publisher would necessarily have to be human.
(Technically not "makes", but I always feel like it's better for both sides to understand each other more completely in order to have a more fruitful debate)